We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can’t possibly happen again. Albert Bates, author of The Financial Collapse Survival Guide and Cookbook, brings you along on his personal journey.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Summer is Coming

"
Studies
such as these help us gaze into the uncertain future and ask if that is what we
want for our children. Most of us don’t. A few of us actually try to do
something to change it. For the rest, the lag time is comforting. The complexity
of non-linear feedback systems gives us an excuse to procrastinate."

Why are zombies so ubiquitous
in contemporary popular culture? The HBO mini-series, Game of Thrones, supplies one theory. Unlike in the AMC series, Walking Dead, or in the film, World War Z, the undead are not coming
on like a Blitzkrieg hoard. Rather, the White Walkers are building slowly, as a
rumor, sometimes killing the messenger and leaving the message undelivered.
“Winter is coming” is an expression that hangs in the air, deepening the sense
of foreboding.

One reviewer (for The New York Times)
observed that “bringing in the White Walkers might be a way to ultimately point
up the pettiness of politics — which is to say, no one cares who sits on what
throne once zombies start eating people.” Thrones’ first four seasons of “people
slicing, stabbing, axing, poisoning, eating, crushing and moon-dooring one
another in every possible context,” underscore the point — that the pettiness
of politics still rules the day.

Game of
Thrones resonates because outside the window is the drama of NATO expansion
bumping up against retired Red Army vets in the Ukraine, the unmasking of shadow
banks in the U.K. by the Financial Times
and shadowing governments by Edward Snowden, or the sniper battle on the U.S. Republican
right that is so entertaining to MSNBC and CNN. It is all much ado about
nothing. Just North of our popular culture Wall is a climate juggernaut, building
momentum.

Last month John P. Holdren, Director of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy, released the Third National Climate Assessment
(NCA3). If you missed the news, it
was because the report was all about the White Walkers no one wants to talk
about.

By the end of
this century, a 2.75°C to 5.5°C global temperature rise is projected, based on
continued higher emissions — fracking, coal, deep ocean and other sources being
exploited to the maximum (referred to as the “A2 scenario”) — and a roughly 1.7°F
to 2.8°C rise under a cutback scenario (“B1”) — best understood as a Peak Oil/Financial
Collapse scenario, because governments would never agree to such drastic
measures — 80% in a decade or so — if further stalling were an option. The NCA3 projections are based on
results from 16 supercomputer climate models in a comparison study.

Both scenarios — business
as usual and drastic curtailment — produce a temperature and climate regime
that would likely be lethal for modern civilization, if not the human race. In
the Cancun round of the Committee of Parties in 2010, United Nations high level negotiators produced a general agreement — over the opposition of the USA, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Australia,
Israel and other obstructionists — that "recognizing that climate
change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human
societies and the planet,” 2°C was
the “line in the sand” beyond which global temperatures should not be allowed
to climb. In the latest three rounds— Durban, Doha and Warsaw — there has been
a strong push from the science and civil sectors to reduce the target to 1.5°C
to avert potentially unmanageable risks of tipping points from which no
recovery would be possible. Since Warsaw last December some of these points —
the inexorable slippage of ice in Antarctica and the release of methane from
permafrost to name two — have tipped.

The NCA3 study is saying, essentially, we are in dangerous territory whether we
stop emissions tomorrow or not. Summer temperatures in the U.S. have
been rising on average 0.4 degrees F per decade since 1970, or about 0.2 C.
Average summertime temperature increase has been 1°C overall, but the Southwest
and West regions have borne the brunt of those increases, and temperatures have
risen an average of 0.4°C, with a few localized areas warming as much as 0.6°C
per decade. This is 5 times faster than the Earth as a whole warmed in the 20th
century. North America, which lags other parts of the planet, is now in an
exponential curve of accelerating change.

“There are a number of findings in
this report that sound an alarm bell signaling the need for action to combat
the threats from climate change. For instance, the amount of rain coming down
in heavy downpours and deluges across the U.S. is increasing; there’s an
increase that’s already occurring in heat waves across the middle of the U.S.;
and there are serious observed impacts of sea-level rise occurring in low-lying
cities such as Miami, where, during high tides, certain parts of the city flood
and seawater seeps up through storm drains. These are phenomena that are already
having direct adverse impacts on human well-being in different parts of this
country.”

Studies such as these help us gaze into the uncertain future
and ask if it is really what we want for our children. Most of us don’t. A few
of us actually try to do something to change it. For the rest, the lag time is
comforting. The complexity of non-linear feedback systems gives us an excuse to
procrastinate.

On
a very large scale, most climate scientists say that much of the excess heat
energy that the Earth is currently absorbing is going into the world’s oceans.
They refer to oceans as “heat sinks.” The major concern with this situation is
that the ‘sinks’ will become ‘sources’ in the future. In other words, the
chickens (massive amounts of heat energy) will come home to roost (wreak havoc
on us with extreme weather events).

While
this energy is being stored in the oceans everything appears to us to be OK. It
is a lot like running up a large debt. … This is the same strategy that U.S.
President Bush (the second) used with the Iraq War. He did not tax Americans to
pay for the war, but put it on the national credit card. There were few
complaints at the time, but now after a trillion dollars we hear complaints
about the “unsustainable levels of federal debt” in America.

Similarly,
climate scientists continue to warn of “unsustainable levels of carbon debt,”
but I suspect more and more people will echo them in the future, especially
because another and perhaps more ominous delay is also built into the climate
system.

Once
fossil fuels are burned the carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for
decades causing more and more warming. Many scientists say that even if we
stopped burning all coal, oil and gas today that we would continue to
experience the effects for the better part of most Wanganui Chronicle readers’
lifetimes.

In my
opinion, markets reflect a dynamic somewhat akin to the Heisenburg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics,which holds that precision is fundamentally limited by Nature: the more precisely the position of a particle is
determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.In an analogous fashion, the
more precisely we can determine the likelihood of a trend change, the less
precisely we can determine the timing of the trend change–and vice versa.

Which takes us back to
what we posted previously with respect to Dennis Meadow’s chart of non-linear responses. Like a coastal
landscape shaped by extreme storm events, the Anthropocene arrives in leaps and
droughts. We can tell the direction of the trend. The timing is anyone’s guess.

3 comments:

Against a powerful and corrupt system it seems impossible to do anything here that will reverse any trends. And we can certainly see that none of the current trends are our friend.

In the face of unspeakably bad news, denial is the predictable response of human nature.

We have now fully set the stage not only for our destruction as a species, but also for the loss of all our knowledge, all our art and all our literature, since we we seem hell-bent on turning it all into ones and zeros inside boxes that will soon be as useful as say, a wire recorder from the 1940's.

So what does a thinking, caring person do? Build an off-grid climate-controlled garden while he still can? Concentrate on his spiritual practice? Hold his family close and give them as much extra love and kindness as he can, knowing he is leaving them with nothing much to look forward to?

What if in addition to gardens and rain barrels we also get to know our neighbors and build community. If we don't hang together we will hang separately. Maybe there will be good things about living closer to the land and our fellows. If you believe that what ever and when ever the end is, you are called to love your neighbor, then you become less of a prepper/hoarder and more of a community builder and policy/faith leader.

It is interesting to note that in the reoccurring Zombie Apocalypse conversations everyone identifies with the person with resources trying to figure out how to or if to share them. No one even pictures themselves as the one in need. By definition everyone can't have resources in a shortage. If you point that out watch how thinking shifts.

We likely have already lost life on the planet as we know it. Now we are on the wind down team. Certainly there is fear and anger and blame in coming to terms with that, but we don't have to stay stuck there. We can go out like animals or we can help the kingdom come and swan dive into the arms of God with our character in tact. We are all terminal anyway. We all grieve or avoid that. Now we have to grieve the loss of this beautiful earth.That is very big.

However, living faith provides guide post for navigating uncertainty and scarcity. People the world over right now and through out time have lived with the struggle to survive everyday. The modern comforts of the developed world have cause us to lose touch with this reality. In planetary time, human comfort and longevity is a very, very new and localized thing. Other peoples have walked thought adversity without becoming animals. Minimizing suffering and a graceful human exit is a goal worth staying engaged for.

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